A Life in Music: Loz Kingsley and Vo Fletcher. Guitar and Mandolin. And how.

Definitely a string thing

In this edition of Lives in Music, I'm talking with Loz Kingsley and Vo Fletcher, Mandolin and Guitar players of great skill and experience. I met this pair, I think, back in 1974, when they were doing a session at the old BRMB Radio. They were no slouches then, and they've only got better since. To listen to the podcast episode, go here, or simply scroll down to the bottom of this post

Vo plays with a bewildering number of talented people all over the midlands and beyond, and he gets together with Loz, who only returned to live work with the much-missed Rhino and The Ranters, for regular and highly enjoyable sessions in some of the nicest boozers in the region. And of course, having spent nearly a year in lockdown, that's something I have missed enormously. There is some compensation with Vo running (as do many others) a live session on Facebook every Tuesday at 6pm.


They have, as you might expect, mighty track records, which you'll hear about. There's also some super live guitar and mandolin work to be enjoyed in this episode, along with a taster from Loz's new album, Vintage Mandolin.

Links

The Tuxedo Bay Facebook page
All you ever need to know about Jellikins
Rick Sanders and Vo Fletcher page on Costa Del Folk
Vo's weekly Wine O'Clock live sessions: Tuesdays 6pm on Facebook 

Albums
Loz's album Vintage Mandolin can be had by emailing loz1954@me.com 
Vo's new album is at vofletcher.com 

Vo and Loz's episode of Lives in Music

 

The Lives in Music Podcast series   

I've been doing this for about two years now. These are interviews with local 
musicians, looking at how music has shaped them throughout their lives. Series 3 
also looks hard at how lockdown has had an impact. There are some lovely stories. 

To see who's in the list of artists, here's a link to see every episode.

One further footnote: the intro and outro flourishes I'm using in this series of Lives in Music podcast come from Vo himself. I asked him for a bit of live impro, and this was the result.  

The Radio To Go blog
This blog has been going since 2007. I started it to focus mainly on radio stories, as the industry went through a series of convulsive changes. Those changes aren't over yet, not by a long chalk. Over the years I expanded the range of topics to cover local music, another subject close to my heart. I think it was a Destroyers gig that pulled me in that direction. I've banged out several hundred posts in that time, and of course deleted quite a few. But if you're interested in thoughts on the local scene and/or radio futures, by all means visit the full topic index on the Radio To Go blog

Photo credit for Vo Fletcher: Colston Halls

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Lives in Music: a new Radio To Go Podcast series

When you've played for ever, you've got stories to tell

I'm launching Lives in Music, a podcast series. The first episode dropped this Sunday, October 6th. 

You can get all the published podcast episodes on Spotify, iTunes and all good podcast directories. Series 1 episodes are currently arriving weekly.

I've been working on this for some time; I've thought about this for even longer. The series will feature musicians and music workers from our patch who have put in some serious time. These are people who have literally spent their lives making, or supporting the making of, music. Some are very well known; others less so. But they're all pretty damn fabulous and/or interesting. After hundreds of gigs - maybe even a thousand or more - which have brought me great pleasure, I want to try to give back just a bit. Hence this series of interviews. It's a tip of the hat. And the stories I'm hearing are amazing.

So many people, so little time. 

I have a list as long as your arm of people to talk to. I've recorded quite a few, aiming to complete an episode a week. That doesn't mean I'll be able to drop a podcast every week. There's editing, polishing, illustrating, and all the podcast gubbins to do. That takes time. So Lives in Music Series 1, kicking off this Sunday, will be a ten-parter, with an episode dropping each week. Lives in Music Series 2 will kick off after Christmas, all being well.

Nailing some people down can be a challenge, too: after all, some of our outstanding musos are out playing five or six nights a week with different outfits, making money – at last - through their versatility. You can't begrudge them that when some were barely scraping a living forty years ago. 

Free your mind and your music chops will follow

I've long felt that musos can go in one of two ways in terms of creativity and craft as they get older. They can stick with what they know, playing the steady, the safe and the familiar; there's a market for that, and good luck to them. 

Or - and this is where it gets interesting and wondrous - they expand and blossom as they grow older, embracing more styles and experience, for the love and the exhilaration of it all.  Often you find those guys tearing it up with huge smiles on their faces, in tiny places. Those guys interest me, and they're the ones I want to feature.  

Not forgetting the enablers

But there's also a host of people who work in and around the industry, who love the business of making music: promoters, instrument makers, managers. They also help to make all this possible. I'm talking with several for the series; several more have agreed to chat. 

The joy of small venues where the magic happens

These days, I spend more gig time in small venues, close up to the artist, than ever I did in enormodomes back in the day. The attraction? Well, apart from cheaper drinks and free parking, it's the music and the musicians, naturally. Especially the sheer craft of people who have been playing forty years or more. 

I get more out of it, whether it's places like the Hare and Hounds in  Birmingham, or the Kitchen Garden Cafe across the road for Jazz and Folk, or any of the venues where the peerless Lisa Travis has been in charge, including her newest perch, the Prince Of Wales. There's plenty more - space prevents me listing everywhere. But I should mention, and give a tip of the hat to, the wonderful Paul Murphy. Paul ran his second Songwriter's Cafe for several years from his treehouse venue; I did online continuity for him. He was one of the people who showed me just how powerful great music, crafted from deep experience, could be in a tiny intimate venue. He was in no small way responsible for my thinking in this area, especially since he passed on.  

So... who's on the menu?

Ah, that would be telling. Series 1 will be an interesting mix. I'll have a fresh blog post, with all the relevant details, to go with each podcast episode. You'll be able to keep across who's in the series by following the Lives in Music podcast once the first episode drops. On top of that there'll be the usual Facebook and Tweetage. 

But there is one stalwart, who I recorded with, who won't be going up as a podcast. Sadly, the audio quality just wasn't good enough. But not all is lost; I will transcribe, and it will be worth it. Steve Gibbons and I talked for two hours straight about growing up in Brum, where his first gigs were, who looked after him, and how he got started. He was meticulous. So that episode will see the light of day as a Radio To Go blog post... and I will be spending a lot of time researching pictures of the locations. It's making for brilliant Birmingham rock history. 

The Lives In Music podcast is on Spotify, iTunes and all good podcast directories. Series 1 episodes currently arriving weekly!

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A West Midlands YouTube chart - August 2017

New players? Yup. And Leshurr crushes it again.

This post covers a Radio to Go fixture: The Summer 2017 Chart for local acts' YouTube views. 

Up until last year I did this every six months. Workload and illness put a stop to that in February, but I'm back now.

House compilation rules are:

• The chart displays acts that are local to, or who have come the West Midlands
• Videos must be three years old or less
• The two most viewed videos go into the reckoning
• The numbers can change. One in particular is going up by tens of thousands a day right now, because it's so new: Lotto Boyz' Birmingham (Anthem). By the time you read this the numbers will probably need revising afresh. But by definition all totals will be out of date by the time I publish this. 
• Official videos preferred where possible: no wobbly smartphone live stuff.
• I do make mistakes. I miss things; please so sing out if you spot something amiss and I will it fix.
• Totals were checked early this past week.

So here's the chart, and I have a lengthy commentary afterwards. There's a LOT to digest.

Artists	Vid 1	Vid 2	Total
Lady Leshurr	Queens Speech 5	Queens Speech 4	67213030
Jacob Banks	Worthy	Love Me (with Wide Awake)	11810818
Jorja Smith	Where Did I go?	Blue Lights	5608426
Laura Mvula	Overcome	Phenomenal Woman	3262702
Lotto Boyz	Birmingham (Anthem) ft JayKae	Bad Gyal	3010731
Editors	Life Is A Fear	Ocean Of Night	2722388
Oceans Ate Alaska	Vultures and Sharks	Escapist	1842741
Mahalia	We The Generation (With Rudimental)	I Remember	1558944
Robert Plant	Rainbow	Turn It Up	985199
Tom Aspaul	Better By Your Side (with Aeble)	Do It Well (with Xyconstant)	833986
Claire Maguire	Elizabeth Taylor	Don't Mess Me Around	742472
Napalm Death	How The Years Condemn	Smash A Single Digit	647834
Tempa	Gimme Respect	Road rage	582753
Peace	Gen Strange	World Pleasure	576992
Tantskii	Storyteller	Storyteller pt 3	555374
Broken Witt Rebels	Guns	Georgia Pine	526214
Anaal Nakraath	Idol	We Will Fucking Kill You	348293
Call Me Unique	Time To Love		307020
Superfood	Mood Bomb	You Can Believe	274546
Ekkah	Last Chance To Dance	Small Talk	259050
Electric Swing Circus	Mamacita	Empires	220919
Swim Deep	Namaste	One Great Song And I Could Change The World	217659
Goldie	I Adore You	Prism	215673
Dapz On The Map	Oh My Days	Shinobi Pt1	209955
Dexys	Both Sides Now	Carrickfergus	194183
Stone Foundation	Your Balloon Is Rising	Beverley	159233
The Enemy	It's Automatic	Don't Let Nothing get in the way	125871
Beverley Knight	Middle Of Love	Marvellous Party	123927
Slick Don	BRAP	Feds	112523
Scott Matthews	Elusive	Let's Get You Home	104890
Jaws	Right in Front Of Me	What We Haven't Got Yet	90458
Magnum	Crazy Old Mothers		75535
Laurence Jones	Got No Place To Go	Touch Your Moonlight	74527
Jump The Shark	Robot Song	There's Always One	64292
God Damn	Dead To Me	Shoe Prints In The Dust	57479
The Twang	New Love	On The 24th	51672
Answer Back	She's into Rock'n'Roll	You've Got Me	49660
Rebecca Downes	Believe	Messed Up	49637
Harry and The Howlers	Hell In High Heels		46167
Truemendous	OTYL	L.I.S.P.	39314
The Wonder Stuff	For The Broken Hearted	Don't You Ever	33789
Lion Art and Friendly Fire	Run Away		33606
The Assist	Love	Tell Her How You Feel	29738
Ed Geater	Steady Strides (Enigma Dubz mix)	Don't Think	26854
Dissident Prophet	Human 2.0	Writing on the wall	24254
Tayla	Call Me Danger	Coming Back Around	24146
Johnny Foreigner	If you can't be honest be awesome	Le Schwing	23880
Cantaloop	Dig It		23597
Kioko	Tired of Lying	Deadly Roots	23103
Victories At Sea	Bloom	Up	21857

Some conclusions? Just a few

This chart raises almost as many questions as it answers. There are big changes. New tech has barged in and upset the applecart - again. It also shows how videos are consumed, with massive impacts on this chart.

We're looking at two universes. I'm really not sure if the same measurement criteria apply: one sector racks up numbers far, far in excess of other genres, and in many cases these do not chime with Spotify numbers or sales patterns.

So it's a different game, again. We've always had record company 'assisted' numbers - that's just an extension of chart-fiddling practises from last century, and I'm pretty sure that's always affected this chart at the top end. But there's more going on. As usual, the new stuff comes out of left-field.

Brum Grime - the BIG new factor

First it was underground. Now it's in the open, with truly startling numbers. Brum Grime is huge. Interestingly, Walsall's favourite son Goldie, now doing different things, places below the current hot male acts (JayKae, Dapz, etc), who have racked up sensational viewing figures.

Towering above everyone is Lady Leshurr, whose two most-viewed videos do better than the rest of the chart put together. Interestingly, her recent Queens Speech videos are made in bright sunshine or with well-lit backgrounds, and they use lots of cute post-production. They do better than her newer, darker, but still successful Unleshed series.

Leshurr hasn't stopped growing her numbers, unlike some of the mega acts that have preceded her at the top of the chart. Her already vast totals show a 40% leap up from last year. I strongly suspect that the vast majority of her viewers are female, in sharp contrast to her less successful male counterparts. There's a couple of reasons for this.

So who is looking at what? And where?

I do think the numbers need to be taken with some caution - Grime videos, especially from blokes (the overwhelming majority of videos, if not by viewing numbers), might just be made for smartphone consumption. It's certainly statement music. The only time I hear Grime, unless I tune in to 1Xtra or something more specialised still, is on smartphones played by spotty white boys on the bus or the train. I also hear it from amped up sound systems in muscle cars. So, yes, it's on the radio and online, but essentially it's underground... just with massive numbers.

There may be, too, a different consumption pattern to that of conventional music videos. The density of Grime lyrics makes for repeated visits; that's generally not the case with 'straight' music videos. A Grime video is an end in itself; a straight music video is normally a sales tool, made to sell a record.

Boys are still boys (sigh)

Interestingly, Grime shares values with old school Metal: Leshurr apart, it's largely young men with attitude protesting an unfair world. Sometimes those protests are entirely justified. But often our boy is just bragging, or even lecturing, with his heavy mates, all blokes, all on the bad side of town, or looming from a muscle car with blackout windows. Where women are present, they tend to be adoring girlie types wiggling in the background. Oh dear.

Fine, if that's what you want, and a lot of people do. Me, I've seen all that just a few too many times, in Grime and elsewhere. Hard Rock used to be a particularly fertile ground. 
  

Elsewhere? Not good news

Meantime, over in video-as-promotional-tool territory, things are rough. You can knock up a video on an iPhone, and many people do - it works great where the groove or the rhymes are the heart of the project.

But that doesn't quite work for rock, folk, jazz, dance or indie. The past five years or so have seen less new videos being produced by acts at the lower end of the chart. Those videos cost, and times are tighter than ever. And there seems to be a slackening off of viewing figures for Indie and Rock; some big names are sliding down, or have even slid off this chart. Take a look at last year's chart for a comparison. And on the more current front, some of our hottest and most tipped new Indie outfits, who didn't make the chart, are scoring numbers that are, frankly, embarrassing.

Winners? Look at the astonishing Male/Female splits. 

Take a bow, Lady Leshurr, Jacob Banks, Jorja Smith, Mahalia, Lotto Boyz, Tempa and a few others... Lower down, I'm delighted to see some pals like Harry and the Howlers, Ed Geater and the (big-time) return of Electric Swing Circus making inroads. 

But take a bow, women artists: it's not just Leshurr's contribution that makes the views by gender split so interesting.

In this list we have 14 female or female-fronted acts, 36 male or male-fronted. Now look at these totals:

Views for Female acts	79,517,768
Views for Male acts	25,983,582
Average for Female	5,678,941
Without Leshurr	946,518
Average for Male	72,766

So, while the field is still dominated by blokes numerically, the reactions to their work is dwarfed by reactions to Female or Female-fronted videos. Even when you strip out Leshurr's extraordinary numbers, which you really should not. Lessons to be learned, maybe? 


The improvers

You want more? Big improvers on last year are shown in these two breakout charts, sorted by percentage and numerical increases respectively.

Artists	% difference		Artists	Difference
Electric Swing Circus	1294.07		Lady Leshurr	20,012,294
Jorja Smith	605.24		Jacob Banks	7,205,217
Laurence Jones	183.34		Jorja Smith	4,813,180
Jacob Banks	156.44		Lotto Boyz	3,010,731
Claire Maguire	113.93		Laura Mvula	1,465,363
Dexys	101.48		Mahalia	663,679
Beverley Knight	90.03		Tempa	582,753
Stone Foundation	81.65		Claire Maguire	395,405
Laura Mvula	81.53		Goldie	215,673
Mahalia	74.13		Dapz on the Map	209,955

So that's it. Lots to glean from a chart, which, while imperfect, still has trends to digest. I wrote over a year ago about the rise of female artists in the region. It's still going on. 

And if I missed you out, holler. 

More music business posts on Radio To Go

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I still do stuff on Brum Radio, a volunteer-run internet station. It's online here; download the Brum Radio app here. My Brum Radio page is here; scroll down for all the shows. 

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Elections. Hustings. Culture. I'm so depressed.

It's election season. God help us.

I went to a hustings this week. A what? A hustings – that's where a bunch of people who want to be elected try to convince you that they know what they are talking about, and have an idea of a way to go forward.

Elections. Again, dammit. The reality is a parade of insincere individuals spouting robotic slogans to convince us that they really care, when for the past ten years (and more, going back to 1997 and Tony Blair) it's been painfully obvious that they really don't.

This hustings was for the West Midlands Mayoral election, and the specific area for discussion was Culture. You probably didn't know that this was going on. And if you did, you probably weren't that excited – after all, the hall (the small one in the Birmingham Rep/Birmingham Library complex) wasn't even full.

I wanted hope. I lost the will to live.

God, it was depressing. Six candidates, wielding sound-bites ranging from old-school hard left gags (the Communist guy, who might be good fun at a party) through to the deeply depressing 'Take Back Control' slogan that Labour have saddled themselves with – what were they thinking of? But as for even half a spark of originality? Thin pickings, I'm afraid. The Green party guy punched above his weight, and the Lib Dem lady was ever so nice and reasonable, but I don't see either of them sweeping the board. As for UKIP? Talking with any credibility about arts and culture in the most diverse region in the UK is, frankly, a bit of a challenge.

Meantime, at the coal face - anyone been there to take a look?  

Local knowledge, let alone recognition of the problems people in the creative sector have to deal with was pretty much non-existent. Sion Simon, the grumpily subdued Labour guy, muttered a few words about local music, which was the least I would have expected from an ex-employee of Music UK. No-one else had the remotest clue about how brilliant our music scene is. Of course, they'd have had to have done a bit of research. That means rather more than just going to a play at the Rep.

There was talk of Channel 4 coming to Brum. There was talk of Stephen 'Peaky Blinders' Knight's plans to set up a local studio. Both of those would be nice, of course. But nothing's happened yet. Still, it let the candidates witter on about theoretically positive developments

And there was talk of major gigs, big names coming to Brum! Whoopee! But those events are self-funding, and when you think about it, they actually extract money from our region. Some vague talk about corporate partnerships emerged from the (very well-funded) Tory candidate, Andy Street, who bounced about enthusiastically, but actually said very little indeed about anything, and saved a low politico blow for Sion Simon to the very end. 

But as for culture? Oh, come on. Nobody paid the slightest attention to the grass roots areas where new theatre, dance, music, poetry, multimedia and experimentation are flourishing, entirely through the efforts of dedicated individuals who love what they do. Nobody talked about growing and supporting local talent. Nobody talked about securing and preserving venues and platforms for talent to emerge. Nobody has the remotest notion of making positive use of the brilliant work that's already going on, and which will continue to go on, with no support from funding bodies. Nobody even acknowledged that the grass roots is where it all starts from, and that's why the grass roots are so important.

So.... going forward, chaps? Any ideas? At All?

The audience was, predictably, clued up on funding. Questions ranged from the well-documented and obscene gap in ACE funding, where London's spending ran at £26 a head, and ours ran at £12.33 a head in 2015/16 - before the more savage recent cuts - to the insultingly paltry BBC Midlands regional spend, which has led over the past two decades to a virtually complete collapse in local radio and tv production. When these figures came up in questions, every candidate sprang to life and banged on about how jolly unfair it all was. But as for a strategy to build up from where we are now? I heard nothing.

I will vote on May 4^th. I will vote with my heart. But I don't expect things to change in the slightest.

A West Midlands YouTube Top 50 - August 2016.

The 8th bi-annual Radio To Go video survey

Late August. Time to check who is doing well on YouTube. There are interesting conclusions to be drawn:

• The enduring appeal of some music genres
• A huge generational distance between different sets of fans
• Maybe suspicious increases in numbers - you'll have to work that one out for yourself, but the numbers are there
• A changing of the guard near the top. 

We still have the same leader as in February, but the appeal of her format may be on the wane. Details after the jump...